Music Reviews : Ima Concerts Opens Second Hermosa Beach Season

Yoko Matsuda and Daniel Shulman, founders of Ima Concerts, have a tiger by the tail. The chamber-music organization, which opened a second South Bay season Monday night--it gives another series in Claremont and puts on an additional five private-home series--seems to be burgeoning.

At the opening in comfortable, acoustically commodious Civic Theatre in Hermosa Beach, Shulman announced that Ima Concerts will take its wares to Japan at the end of this month. Because the visit will coincide with the L.A. Philharmonic’s tour of that country, Philharmonic players Michele Zukovsky and Daniel Rothmuller, who appeared with Matsuda and Shulman at this opening, will join their colleagues in chamber concerts when there is no conflict with their orchestral tour schedule.

More important than growth is quality, of course, and quality is what Ima--the Japanese word has two meanings, now and living room --has in abundance. The four players heard Monday--violinist Matsuda, pianist Shulman, clarinetist Zukovsky and cellist Rothmuller--have each earned strong reputations for virtuosity on their respective instruments and achievement as ensemble players. Monday, they again demonstrated both.

Except that the piano upon which Shulman played seemed to lack the musical weight one might wish for in all four of the presented works, the sounds of these ensembles in the 502-seat auditorium emerged clear, warm and honest.

And the playing--in Beethoven’s Trio, Opus 11, Berg’s Four Pieces for clarinet, Bartok’s “Contrasts” and Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio--proved splendid. However long or short these musicians may have worked together, the impression they give is of artistic solidity and mutual respect.

Because it combined urgency, authority and relaxation in practically equal parts, Matsuda, Zukovsky and Shulman’s performance of “Contrasts” was the high point here.

Similar virtues marked the playing of Zukovsky, Shulman and Rothmuller in Opus 11. In the Berg pieces, Zukovsky and Shulman probed deeply and shared their findings.

An apparent lack of perspective kept the Dvorak performance from achieving architectonic clarity; as things were, this reading seemed only to ramble, never to cohere. Its many parts sounded attractive, even sang out convincingly. But the total never came together.